The novel and the short story were not far behind. It was Eliza Orzeszkowa (1841-1910) who broke the tradition of the Romantic historical novel and developed it as an instrument of social investigation and ethical polemic. She was a spirited woman from Lithuania who had taken an active part in the 1863 insurrection before settling down to a life of writing. An ardent feminist, she was also concerned with breaking down the barriers of social constraint in the interests of other groups caught in the trap of poverty or prejudice, most notably the Jews. Another woman, Gabriela Zapolska (1857-1921), wrote novels and plays which dwelt more specifically on the exploitation of women by society. The most talented woman writer of the period was Maria Konopnicka (1842-1910), who separated from her husband after ten years of marriage in order to devote herself to writing.
The frequent imprisonment or exile of the menfolk in a family left women in positions of responsibility for its survival, and their participation in conspiratorial and even guerrilla activity tended to place them on an equal footing with men. As a result, they were voicing views and demands on the subject of sexual equality and freedom that were not heard in England or France until the next century.
One of the most formative writers where young men were concerned was the Nobel Prize winner Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916). Ostensibly a Positivist dedicated to the diagnosis and cure of social ills, Sienkiewicz also displayed a Romantic nationalism not entirely in keeping with the current ideology. He indulged this by writing a trilogy—
A more typical figure and the best Polish novelist of the nineteenth century was Aleksander Głowacki (1847-1912), who wrote under the pen name of Bolesław Prus. He was a member of the minor szlachta, but his penniless father was a functionary and his education was cut short for lack of money. He was wounded during the insurrection of 1863 and spent some time in prison after it. As a young man he had been fascinated by mathematics and the natural sciences, which he had studied at Warsaw’s Main School before being obliged to earn his living as a contributor of humorous pieces to periodicals. He went on to write two of the greatest novels in the Polish canon, exploring the major questions, existential as well as national, facing Polish society with a degree of scepticism that inspired reflection.
Positivism and the programme of organic work which accompanied it produced impressive results. Everything from hygiene to education was affected. People with brains were encouraged to use them to pursue specific goals rather than waste them on planning hopeless risings. It is largely thanks to this that Poland did not disappear from the intellectual map of Europe along with its frontiers.
Compared with other European nations, the Poles contributed little to the scientific advances of the nineteenth century. Ignacy Łukasiewicz succeeded in distilling crude oil in Galicia and built the first kerosene lamp in 1853; Zygmunt Wróblewski and Karol Olszewski of the Jagiellon University were the first to achieve the liquefaction of oxygen; in 1898 Maria Skłodowska-Curie discovered Polonium and went on to pioneer research into radiation; the organic chemist Jakub Natanson, the biochemist Marceli Nencki and others added in various ways to the sum of human knowledge. Science was a politically neutral sphere.
The arts, on the other hand, were profoundly marked by their subjection to the national cause or to that of social progress. When disaster overtook the Commonwealth, artists began to render not the present but the past, often in idealised form. This gave rise to a tradition of patriotic genre painting—lancers on picket duty, Husaria at the charge and other scenes which implied the glories of the past. After the death of the Romantic poets, this function of painting took on extra significance. It was indulged with greater abandon by artists such as Artur Grottger (1837-67), who covered the 1863 insurrection in a series of symbolic scenes, and Jan Matejko (1838-93), best known for monumental canvases of great moments in Polish history which embalmed for all time the myths and heroes of a bygone age. Others concentrated on subjects, such as peasants or Jews, which raised social and national issues. This set them apart not only from the Romantic historicists, but also from those who swam in the mainstream of European art and embraced trends such as Impressionism.